Some of the countries that were once part of the USSR but are now sovereign states include Ukraine, Belarus, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Moldova, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. Many citizens of these countries harbor ill will toward the Russian government because of the poor treatment they received during the communist years.

One of the reasons why the USSR was such a dominant force in the Olympics was because citizens of so many different countries competed under the USSR flag. Most countries separated from the USSR in the early 1990s when perestroika (rebuilding) and glasnost (openness) caused a revolution in Russia during which the communist system of government fell, and the different countries became their own sovereign states.

Though the Russian Federation is only one country, it is a vast country which takes up land on the Asian as well as the European continents. Because the country is so large, it has a lot of natural resources at its disposal. Some of these resources include petroleum, timber, natural gas, oil and fur.